Monday, April 25, 2016

What the Failure of the Geneva Talks Means

The Syrian opposition’s High
Negotiations Committee’s (HNC) withdrawal from the Geneva talks is fundamentally a
reflection of the Obama administration’s failure to reach a clear agreement
with Putin regarding transitional arrangements, including both the nature of
the administrative partitioning of Syria and matters unrelated to Syria but
nonetheless incorporated into the Syria talks.

More specifically however, the
HNC decision came in protest of the Russian-backed proposal submitted by the
Assad regime to the UN Syria Envoy, Staffan de Mistura, which called for the
formation of a national unity government under the rule of the country’s
current leader Bashar Al-Assad. Assad’s major war crimes have been extensively documented by international monitors.

This proposal is utterly impractical,
because it changes nothing in terms of regime’s structure. Therefore, the HNC
could not accept it without losing the support of rebel groups not to mention
the general goodwill among millions of Syrians who continue to believe in the
revolution precisely because of the costs they all have had to
pay: deaths, torture, detention, dislocation, humiliation, among other
atrocities. The opposition movement was never going to accept such a proposal,
and Russia’s backing it at this late stage—after months of extensive talks in
Geneva and between Russia and the United States—sets the clock back to the days
before the Geneva Process ever commenced.

There are rational and pragmatic
voices who assert that any solution which stops the violence at this stage should
be acceptable because, no matter who is in power, the country has been
irrevocably changed by the revolution. The old ways simply cannot return.
And they would argue that, in a sense, the regime has already lost the
battle—Assad sealed his fate when he turned to Iran and Russia. Though I myself
subscribe to this view, it has few backers within the opposition ranks. This
might, in itself, suggest that there is no one within the opposition prepared
to provide the kind of long-term leadership to capitalize on the regime’s
glaring weakness to achieve politically and diplomatically what could not be
accomplished by military means.

Because there is no one situated
to actually lead the opposition in a way that could defeat Assad politically
should he stay in power as the head of a unity government, it may be wise that
the HNC is refusing to accept any proposal that keeps Assad there.

Syria lacks the charismatic and
popular leaders who might prevail on the people to swallow the bitter pill of
Assad’s staying as part of a transitional arrangement and thereby gain the time
and the opportunity to carry out the struggle through political means. And,
contrary to orientalist misconceptions, Levantine culture does not easily allow
for the emergence of such leaders. Hafiz Al-Assad and Saddam Hussein were
exceptions in this regard, not because of any genuine charisma, but because
they imposed themselves through brute force, the dirtiest and bloodiest of
politics, and continuous brainwashing through state media and the educational
system. Despite their initial success and ongoing campaigns, these pale
representations of traditional sultans were still secretly reviled by the
majorities in Syria and Iraq for their brutality, corruption and sectarian
games.

Riad Hijab, chief coordinator of the main Western-backed
Syrian opposition, attends a panel discussion at the Munich Security Conference
in Munich, Germany.

The current leader of the HNC is
emerging as the most professional figure that the Syrian opposition has thus
far produced—which should serve as an indictment of the entire political
culture in the Levant. Of course, Bashar Al-Assad and members of his extended
family are a far greater indictment, especially because so many Syrians
continue to be loyal to Assad under the mistaken belief he and his ilk
represent the “lesser evil” or are “smarter” and “more credible” than
opposition figures. This misguided belief allows for the justification and
legitimation of all manner of brutality, no matter the scale. As such, it could
not help in fixing any of the problems that paved our way to the current
mayhem.

The inability to produce
charismatic leaders—and the tendency to try to destroy those who show promise
in this regard—is not the reflections of some democratic impulse or egalitarian
ethos as some in the opposition argue. This trend is instead borne out of envy,
narcissism and nihilistic individualism and not fear of
oppression. At the risk of overgeneralization, the mindset encapsulated by the
famous statement “Aprés moi, le deluge!” seems to represent that of the
average Levantine citizen, and not only Levant’s rulers. This is the reason why
pragmatic and charismatic leaders will not emerge at this stage, regardless of
the dire need for them. We simply have to make do with what we have. In
practice, this calls for having to accept figures armed with mediocre potential
and limited intellectual capacity. But as long as they are not mass murderers,
this will represent an improvement for Syria.

Indeed, if the immediate concern
in Syria is peace, then at this stage no side should appear to be a loser.
Unfortunately, the Russian-backed proposal, in fact, asks the opposition to
capitulate. Things don’t have to be this way.

In the summer of 2015, I submitted a proposal to various concerned parties that
called for Assad’s resignation from the presidency while allowing him to remain
as leader of a political coalition representing the Baath and other loyalist
parties. I noted that Assad, if he chooses, can later even run for the high
office in free and internationally monitored elections, allowing for refugees
and expatriates to vote as well. Meanwhile, he and the HNC can nominate
representatives of their respective political coalitions to take part in a true
transitional unity government. The idea of creating a military council, as
currently proposed, is also welcome, provided the process is carried in the
same manner used for choosing the transitional government.

This proposal drew guarded but
positive reactions from opposition leaders, and it appears that the HNC went to
Geneva expecting a deal along these lines, which nonetheless represents a major
compromise on their part. I continue to believe that this is the only way forward;
though giving Bashar Al-Assad a pass on his crimes against humanity turns my
stomach. But if it brings peace, so be it. After all, how many people were held
accountable for the Lebanese or Sudanese civil wars? Moreover, the Levant has
its own less subtle but perhaps more poetic ways of dealing with people like
Assad. The father lived to see his favorite son and then heir apparent Bassil
die in a car accident in 1993, and it broke him. Now his lesser favorite son,
Bashar, is supervising the destruction of the realm, literally squandering the
ill-begotten family inheritance. Soon, he will become useless to his allies, and
as such, dispensable. To some this may appear as wishful thinking; to
me, it’s simply the befitting ending for a mediocre Levantine tyrant whose
folly makes inevitable.

Still, the creation of the
International Criminal Court and the adoption of the Responsibility to Protect
were intended to avoid having to settle for such unappealing
arrangements—allowing war criminals to escape legal accountability, even when
one can see a different kind of accountability looming. But, considering the lack
of moral fortitude on the part of the Obama administration and various European
governments in the face of Assad’s impunity, this may well be the best we can
hope to achieve at this stage.

The lesser evil in Syria, then,
is not about choosing this figure over that. It is instead about choosing a
practical settlement that may not immediately deliver on the expectations of
the erstwhile revolutionaries but can still work for all sides—excluding the
Islamic State and like-minded movements—by breaking with the past, even as it
pardons war criminals like Assad. And of course the opposition did field war
criminals of its own, though their respective contribution is a mole hill
compared to Assad’s mountain.

For some period of time, it
appeared that the Russians were inclined to go even further and were willing to
ask—or force—Assad to leave the country entirely. But since their talks with
the United States seem to have faltered, and seeing the Obama administration
remains committed to its do-nothing stand, for Syria, it’s back to square one.

Go ahead, patronize me!

About Ammar

Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian-American author and pro-democracy activist based in Silver Spring, Maryland. He is the founder of the Tharwa Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to democracy promotion. His personal website and entries from his older blogs can be accessed here.

The Delirica

The Delirica is a companion blog to the Daily Digest of Global Delirium meant to highlight certain DDGD items by publishing them as separate posts. Also, the Delirica republishes articles by Ammar that appeared on other sites since 2016. Older articles can be found on Ammar's internet archive: Ammar.World